On the Great Staircase and in the Little Drawing Room at Coughton Court in Warwickshire hangs a family group of portraits which came from Harvington Hall in Worcestershire. The earliest, of Humphrey Pakington (1555-1631), is dated 1599 and shows him in an oval frame, with receding hair, goatee beard and dark, slightly protruding eyes. He is wearing a ruff and black doublet, and the long fingers of his left hand lightly grasp a pendent jewel. His lips are set in a straight line, and the general effect is one of woodensolemnity. Close by is the portrait by Cornelius Jansen of Humphrey’s second wife, Abigail Sacheverell, a much more vivid character. She is a podgy woman with a double chin, in a magnificently padded and slashed dress of blue and silver and an enormous lace collar set off by jewellery. Here, beyond doubt, was a capable and masterful woman, an impression which is confirmed by her surviving letters. The portrait is signed by Jansen above theleft sleeve, and is dated 1630, the year before Humphrey’s death. The series continues with two portraits of their elder daughter Mary Yate (one by the school of Jansen); with one of their younger daughter Anne Audley (also attributed to Jansen); with one of Sir John Yate, who married Mary; and with one by Adriaen van der Werff of Sir Charles Yate, son of Sir John and Mary. Finally, there is a portrait (school of Lely) of Sir Charles’s daughter, another Mary Yate, whose marriage to Sir Robert Throckmorton took the Harvington estates to the Throckmortons in 1696.